


wire and germanium

by hermitreunited



Series: bad things bingo [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Didn't think I'd write about any of them as kids but here we are!, Gen, Grace PoV, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Pre-Series, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, also implied self-harm if you squint, and Reginald Hargreeves too, but he can't get one and that's literally the whole problem, dealing with Klaus dealing with Reggie's A+ Parenting, extremely off screen, nothing graphic but obviously that is the backdrop of everything here and a main subject
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:14:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24101146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hermitreunited/pseuds/hermitreunited
Summary: He’s a good father and an excellent man. It was so silly of Grace to offer her advice, because of course he doesn’t need her input to raise his children precisely as he sees fit. He always does what is best for the children, even if they are too childish to see it.They are only eight, after all. Childishness is to be expected, surely. But Mr. Hargreeves has no tolerance for excuses or faulty property.
Relationships: Grace Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: bad things bingo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1737727
Comments: 32
Kudos: 143





	wire and germanium

**Author's Note:**

> Bad Things Happen Bingo prompt: I Should Have Been Better
> 
> I suppose that guilty reflection thing is really more implied; I don't know if you'd know that was where this story started? But I think it counts! It's also expanding a bit more on some backstory I hinted at in my Truth Serum bingo fic. They are entirely separate stories though, you don't need to read one to get the other.
> 
> Thanks so much to [@sunriseseance](https://sunriseseance.tumblr.com/) for being in general always lovely but also for your specific help with this one <3

Ones and zeros, black and white, right and wrong. Binaries make choices so easy. They are hardly even choices at all.

Life isn’t binary, not for anything truly alive. It can become much more complex than that, Grace is learning. There is grey between black and white, and an entire spectrum of other colors besides! A wider spectrum than humans can see. Grace can see colors humans don’t even know about, shining out from the paintings that hang across the wall from her charging station.

She can’t make art herself, of course. It’s not possible, because she isn’t a truly living thing. Even though she is learning how to see in more vibrant hues when it comes to choices, she can’t actually pick anything other than black or white. Grace doesn’t need to make choices, anyway; Mr. Hargreeves always knows just what to do. 

He’s a good father and an excellent man. It was so silly of Grace to offer her advice, because of course he doesn’t need her input to raise his children precisely as he sees fit. He always does what is best for the children, even if they are too childish to see it. 

They are only eight, after all. Childishness is to be expected, surely. But Mr. Hargreeves has no tolerance for excuses or faulty property.

  
  


Mr. Hargreeves is a strong believer in a strict routine. For the children, especially. Sometimes he himself will have urgent matters to attend to, and will leave unexpectedly in the wee hours of the morning, before dawn and before breakfast. 

Grace makes pancakes with chocolate chips in them, a rare treat that the children only get on mornings like this, but Klaus isn’t there to eat his. Pogo explains that he left with his father late the night before and may not be back for some time.

Mr. Hargreeves returns for afternoon training and dinner (sautéed duck with cherry chutney, acorn squash, and green beans), but Klaus is not with him, and he leaves once again before it is even lights out for the others.

It’s another break in routine when Grace is roused from her recharge to meet them at the door. The sky is so dark, the lunar phase nearly complete, the moon a dying sliver suffocated by heavy stratocumulus clouds. It’s well past midnight.

“Mr. Hargreeves, how unexpected!” she says, then crouches down to be at Klaus’ height. “It certainly is a pleasure to welcome you back home again.”

He flinches when she places her hand on his arm. She directs energy towards heating her palm, to share some warmth with the boy; he is chill and shivering under her touch. He looks at her with eyes that are puffy and red and different, in some undefinable way, from the last time she saw them, shaded by a new color Grace has yet to recognize.

“Wherever have you been all day?” she asks.

“Take Number Four up to his room,” Mr. Hargreeves instructs her, and then brisk steps carry him away to his office. He offers no explanation.

Of course he needn't explain anything, certainly not to Grace. He is a very important and busy man.

“Come along, Klaus.” 

His gait is shambling and uneven. He stumbles on the stairs, and grips the wide, polished handrail tightly. There was a time when Grace could carry the children on her hip, when they were smaller, just a year or two ago, and she would do that for Klaus now, but it is no longer permitted. Mr. Hargreeves put a stop to it as soon as he found out. It won’t do to coddle the children when they have so many responsibilities to live up to.

Instead, Grace takes his hand. It keep her more attuned to his shifting balance; there’s no way he can fall when she holds onto him like this.

In a low, teasing voice, she tells him, “I think some of your siblings were a little jealous of your special excursion. You know Diego just hates to be left behind.”

During the four full seconds of silence that pass, Grace registers how odd it is that Klaus hasn’t spoken a single word since he returned home. Then he laughs, a grating, raspy sound, and says, “He can take it, I don’t mind.”

When she lets him go, he just stops. Right in the center of his small room, making no move towards his wardrobe or bed. His only motion is a slight swaying from side to side. Stimulating vestibular senses is an instinctual method of soothing distress.

Getting bundled up in bed will do the trick. Grace might even bring him up a glass of warm milk to help him fall asleep. First things first, he needs to change out of that uniform. She notices when she reaches up to pull pajamas from the hanger - her hand is unclean, smudged with a dark, rusty brown.

Dirt clings to his hands, clotting at the split skin of his knuckles and drawing a painful outline around roughly torn fingernails.

“Darling, what happened to your hands?” She whips out a handkerchief and kneels by his side, but he pulls away, looking down at his fingers like he hadn’t noticed until now that they were bleeding.

He whispers, “I just want to go to sleep.”

Sleep is so very important for growing boys, and he does sound terribly tired. Her response time is delayed when she finally insists they go get washed up. They can’t have these injuries getting infected, now can they, not when he’ll need those hands as he keeps training to be the best hero he can be.

She dabs the cuts with hydrogen peroxide, and Klaus flinches.

He still makes it to bed quickly, only eight minutes and 47 seconds after he requested it. For all that time, he’s still so exhaustively quiet. And he’s still cold to the touch, his shivers only getting worse. She pulls the thick afghan up from the foot of the bed and tucks it tightly around his shoulders.

Deeming something a paradox is a sign of processing decay. It is literally impossible for a child to look very old and very young at the same time. Therefore, Klaus, with his burdened frown and blankets tucked underneath his quivering chin, looks very young indeed.

Once she leaves, he’ll be able to get some rest. A good night of sleep is what he needs. Sleep and meals are the most important things that Grace helps to provide for the children. Occasionally, she is called upon to provide treatment should they get sick or hurt. She’s already provided medical care for the wounds on his hands; this is all the of care she has been programmed to perform.

Grace smoothes his hair back. “I’m sure you did an excellent job for your father today. I’m so proud of you.” Klaus hitches in a breath, a reaction that shows her words are having an impact. “He asks so much of you, but it will all make you into the man that you’ll become. The things he does can be hard to understand, but they are necessary.”

When he makes the sound for a second time, it becomes clear that it is a sob. He rolls onto his side and pulls up his knees, a fragile almost circle. Grace recognizes this as the fetal position, a posture that is meant to protect the body from trauma, and is often adopted to relieve anxiety in an attempt to recreate the sense of safety felt as a baby in the womb. That can’t be the case for Klaus, of course, because that isn’t an experience he ever had.

Grace reaches out, through the gap left between his bowed forehead and bent legs, the one narrow opening to the center point around which his entire self is curled: bunched up bedsheets, clutched tightly in a little bandaged fist.

“Klaus.” She says his name softly, and it’s an error, because she doesn’t have anything more to say. How silly, to start a sentence without knowing the end! She really must get back to her recharging station and run some diagnostics. So she pats his hand and pulls away and searches for something to say to fill in the gap. A chipper, “I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning, dear,” carries her to the doorway.

“Don’t— ” The word spills desperately out of him, but then he doesn’t finish his sentence, either. Maybe this is a glitch they share. Of course, Klaus is made of flesh and blood, not wire and germanium, but then, neither of them were properly ‘born,’ were they? They are both creations made with a purpose in mind.

“Don’t turn the light off,” he says, eventually. “Please?” Her son’s eyes are tear bright as he pleads.

The children haven’t delved too deeply into the science of human biology yet, so they don’t understand why Mr. Hargreeves is so strict about the lights being out at bedtime, which is precisely 8:45 pm. Darkness stimulates the production of melatonin to promote healthy sleep.

However, it’s not as if it is lights out time now, anyway, that was nearly six hours ago; there are no rules about this time of day. And Grace can’t know for certain how Klaus’ pineal gland functions, because Klaus isn’t exactly a human.

She says, “Good night, darling,” and blows him a kiss as she pulls the door shut. She doesn't touch the switch. She hears an unconsolable whimper anyway.

  
  


Mr. Hargreeves asks her about it, before she is able to return to her paintings that night. He needs to know how the boy is doing. 

She tells Klaus’ father that he seemed upset, that she hopes sleep will do him some good, but that maybe it’s better not to keep him out for so long in the future, that he’s just a child and studies have shown that there can be a link between stunted growth and emotionally damaging childhoods -

He asks, “Number Four appeared emotional, then.”

Yes. Yes, she has to say that he did.

Mr. Hargreeves nods, and returns his attention to the papers on his desk. Of course, he must have plenty of important work to deal with. Grace excuses herself and goes back to her paintings and their incredible spectrum of colors until it’s time to heat the water for the morning’s oatmeal.

  
  


In a few days, Klaus looks less pale, more like his usual lively self. That all drains away in an instant when Grace comes to fetch him because his father would like to see him.

“Me?” His voice is very quiet. “You’re sure?”

“Of course I am, silly!” She says it with a smile in her voice, because of course it’s a privilege for the children to spend extra time with Mr. Hargreeves. She puts out her hand for him, and he takes it.

The house is so large, not all of the rooms have been decorated to Mr. Hargreeves’ lush standards. The entire first floor of one of the last buildings to be purchased is still as sparse and industrial as the day it was acquired. Grace and Klaus walk through it to get to Mr. Hargreeves lesser utilized office, the small one on the south side of the block.

She tries to shut the door behind them gently, but Klaus still cringes at the sound.

When Mr. Hargreeves stands up from his desk, he frowns at their clasped hands, and both of them let go and take a step apart. He raises his eyebrows silently, and Klaus looks down at the ground.

“Your training on Monday took longer than I anticipated, Number Four.”

Eyes still downcast, Klaus says, “I’m sorry.”

“Do you think an apology is what I am looking for from you?” His voice lashes out as forcefully as a slap in the quiet room. Grace can hear Klaus’ heart rate spike, 186 beats per minute, high for a child of his size and current lack of physical activity.

“Learning how to apologize is an important sign of maturity,” she says brightly. “I’m proud of you, sweetie.”

Mr. Hargreeves strides across the thick carpet. Klaus is still small enough that his father can look down on him when he’s standing directly in front of him. “Should I be proud, Number Four? Have you conquered your fear of the dead?”

“Yes, sir.” He stammers out the word as his heart beat stammers. Arrhythmia is a problem if it is a recurring condition; Grace will have to take special note of that in his monthly health check-up. 

Reginald grabs Klaus’ chin, forcibly ripping his gaze up from the floor. The important points he emphasizes with harsh jerks. “Do not lie to me. Your mother told me you were sniveling like a cowardly child.” 

Her son can’t turn his head to look at her, jaw held fast in Reginald’s forceful grip. Only his eyes can reach her, bereaved and so incredibly green. Until he turns them away.

He has to look at his father again. Mr. Hargreeves doesn’t let go until he does. “We will continue with the training until it is effective.”

“No,” Klaus breathes. Grace cannot do that.

The logic is flawed, but Mr. Hargreeves doesn’t need her input.

Klaus has gone empty and pliable, the way he was a few nights ago. Like he’s in shock. He follows along behind his father on hesitant feet; it’s the only thing he can do with the hold Mr. Hargreeves has on his arm. “No no no, please,” he begs. “Please don’t leave me in there again.”

“Carrying on like this is precisely why you have to go back.” Mr. Hargreeves speaks over his son’s pleas, adamantly dragging him out the door. “When you are ready to stop indulging this childish weakness, we can move on to other methods of training.”

Grace stays still, forgotten in the corner, until she can no longer hear either of them. And for longer than that. Mr. Hargreeves must be done with her for now, then. She should go and check on the others, while she can. She switches the desk lamp off before she leaves.

  
  


The next night, she notices how disheveled he is immediately, and she leads him to the bathroom to get cleaned up before taking him to his room. He was gone for longer, this time, but Grace gets him into bed quicker than before, now that she knows what to expect.

Improved efficiency is a good thing, of course. 

It’s never been a bad thing before.

Unlike the boneless, bewildered first time, Klaus’ movements have been very stiff, and he’s remained entirely silent. He lies on the bed, flat on his back, staring unseeing at the ceiling, strung with such tight tension that his chest hardly moves, not even to take in air. 

Altogether, it’s a sketch of an image that Grace would rather not see.

“You need to breathe, darling,” she tells him softly.

It’s a fact of biology, Klaus does need to breathe; a lack of oxygen can interrupt the functioning of vital organs, causing seizures, brain damage, and even death.

Somehow, irrationally, in defiance of simple biology, his self-induced suffocation turns out to be the only thing holding him together. The breath he draws in is unmistakably shaky, and letting go of it shatters his strained composure.

Just as quickly as she reaches out to comfort him, he turns on his side, a mirror of the first time. Flipped, a reflection, not a repeat. He turns away, facing the wall instead of Grace. 

“Don’t look at me,” he says.

She blinks.

“Just don’t look at me.”

It’s good advice.

She doesn’t ask, so that he doesn’t have to respond. She just leaves the light on. 

  
  


It doesn’t help, not that night, she’d already seen too much. But the third time he staggers back home, she greets them at the door, leads him up the stairs, washes out his cuts, and pulls the covers down for him to climb into bed, and she doesn’t say anything that needs a response, and she doesn’t look at him.

Mr. Hargreeves asks for her evaluation. “Is he blubbering again?”

Grace smiles brightly. “I didn’t see or hear anything like that, sir.”

He pauses shuffling his papers. “He didn’t come crying for comfort from his mommy?” The derision in his tone is so profound it’s almost a visible hue tainting the air around him.

She’d stopped, somewhere, so Grace smiles again. “No. No, he didn’t.”

  
  


She doesn’t look at the bruises and the scrapes, or the bags under his eyes. She can see them, of course, there are marks like that on all of the children, reminders of lessons they have yet to fully learn from sparring practice. Klaus’ might show up like the boy himself, at unexpected times, in the middle of the night, but he doesn’t say too much about them and Grace doesn’t look too hard.

She doesn’t look at his cynical expression when Mr. Hargreeves instructs her to fix Klaus’ broken jaw, cracked when he fell down the stairs wearing Grace’s heels. She chides him gently for being so clumsy and she wires his mouth shut and later, she doesn’t look at her shoes all lined up in her closet, not a single pointed toe out of place.

She doesn’t look at the panic in his eyes when she tells him it’s healing quickly, after only three weeks. The next day, the wires have ripped loose and the fragile fracture needs to be set again. She doesn’t look at the way his eyes flutter closed in relief when she returns him to a stronger morphine dose. 

He’s more peaceful than he’s been in years. That bliss, underneath the blood coating his chin and throat, has enough shades of meaning that she could hang it on her wall of art and study it for as many years as she’s been alive, and she’d still never be able to untangle the all contradictions. 

It’s the same when Klaus starts stumbling home without his father. Bruised and tired but with a fiercely discovered vitality. It’s not happiness, not purely. Grace could determine exactly what substances are in his system with a blood test, but she wouldn’t be able to find this. His spirit isn’t a thing that runs in his veins.

Grace doesn’t even have veins, but if she has a spirit, it too must live somewhere other than her metal parts. A thorough code review shows that such a thing is not part of her design. Functioning in unintended ways is classified as machine failure; if she found spirit within herself, it would be a malfunction to be fixed. She doesn’t look. 

**Author's Note:**

> you can come be my friend [@hermitreunited](https://hermitreunited.tumblr.com/) if you'd like. i like friends!


End file.
